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Resignation from the OSCE – entry into Ukraine.

I have resigned from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Serbia so that I can speak & act freely against Putin Russia’s war in Ukraine, without the constraints of working in an international diplomatic organisation

And my friends, family & colleagues know that I am not very good at speaking diplomatically anyway. Russia is destroying the values of peace, stability, security, democracy & economic progress on which the OSCE is based.

I have this morning [today] crossed into Ukraine to go and see my friends. I won’t see all of my friends this trip but delayed birthday drinks (from the Summer) with some of them. And as usual if anyone wants to practice English I’m happy to talk. I’m the British guy from Liverpool with an Irish name driving a Serbian car

My visit is for solidarity. I have no time for anyone’s nationalism or national myths or ideology (or God/s given ethnic land) but I do care that people should be able to freely choose how to live their lives without being invaded by a brutal tinpot dictator.

Stopping the war, defeating Russia and its allies, is the most important thing in Europe now. It is necessary so that the democratic & whole World can face the giant challenges of environmental problems, food security and livelihoods for all that we must solve

So F*ck Putin I’m going to have a beer with my friends


Posted on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Monday 7 November, Posted here, Wednesday 16 November from Zaporizhzhia, where I arrived on Tuesday 8 November.

I am posting impressions from my visit to Ukraine on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Birmingham and Zaporizhia, Ukraine. Twin cities, back in the USSR?

Thanks to the library catalogue prompt at the Library of Birmingham, & the helpful staff of the Archives section, after 4 years of enquiries I’ve found the evidence that Zaporizhzhya in Ukraine is or was twinned with Birmingham in Great Britain. People in Zaporizhia remember this but no one in Birmingham seemed to. The sixth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 750,000 people.

I hadn’t thought to look for the spelling Zaporozhe – but the library catalogue software prompted me, “did I mean …” and up came one sole result. A record from 1980 of a typed document with no length and no author. ‘Zaporozhe : Birmingham’s twin city in the USSR’.
Typescript (photocopy), [1980]

And a helpful member of the Archives & Collections team volunteered to look if there were any other items at the same class number. She came back with three slim card folders with A4 photocopied documents.

These included ‘Programme for the visit to Birmingham of a civic delegation from Zaporozhye U.S.S.R, 24th Sept.-1st October 1973’

And

‘Communique of the first meeting of the twin cities of the USSR and UK’
Typescript (photocopy), 1987.

The twin cities met in Donetsk in July 1987.

I hope that these Birmingham – Zaporizhzhia links can be rekindled. I first was told about them by Assistant Professor Marina Vorybyova at Zaporizhzhya National University in October 2014. That was my second visit to the city and Ukraine, and first visit as a volunteer honorary Professor. I’ve been back four more times since (including volunteering and a lengthy work trip to Ukraine) and will be there again in the Spring.

The 1980 twin city pamphlet is a fascinating 7 page read, by the Birmingham Branch of the Great Britain USSR Association with the help of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies of the University of Birmingham. Contact M. J. Berry.

Of course the full, lavish & wide ranging programme for the 1973 delegation from the Soviet city included a tour of Shakespeare’s birthplace & performance of Romeo & Juliet in Stratford upon Avon. This is fitting as Zaporizhzhya is home of the Ukrainian Shakespeare Centre. You can read more about that on the Shakespeare Magazine website. http://shakespearemagazine.com

Thanks to Wikipedia for explaining the naming (and statistics):, though there are more different transliterations in English that you can see.
Zaporizhia (Ukrainian: Запорі́жжя [zɑpoˈriʒʒɑ] Zaporizhzhya) or Zaporozhye (Russian: Запоро́жье [zəpɐˈroʐjɪ]), formerly Alexandrovsk (Russian: Алекса́ндровск[ɐlʲɪˈksandrəfsk]; Ukrainian: Олександрівськ [ɔlɛksɑndriu̯sʲk])
(Viewed 29/01/2019).

These are the transliterated into Latin letters name variants that I have come across (I may have missed some)
Zaporizhia / Zaporozhe / Zaporizhzhia / Zaporizhzhya / Zaporozhye / Zaporizia

The third record the archivist found doesn’t even appear on the catalogue when searched under that Call Number LP 31.8. (It was mistyped as P 31.8). A great bit of old fashioned library research.

With thanks to Bob Deed of Birmingham, friend of Ukraine and expert SE Europe traveller, for his continued support in finding out about these links between two major European industrial powerhouses.

Zaporozhe Birmingham s twin city in the USSR scan

Birmingham civic delegation ex Zaporozhye USSR

First meeting twin cities USSR and UK 1987

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Michael Dobson’s talk on ‘Spaces for Shakespeare’ in Zaporizhzhia, south east Ukraine.

A review for Shakespeare Magazine of Professor Michael Dobson’s lecture in the ‘Shakespeare Days in Ukraine’ series, and as part of his tour of Ukraine, in April and May this year. This is on the Shakespeare Magazine website. The review includes the link for the Shakespeare Days in Ukraine festival from this Spring. A very impressive programme of events coordinated by Professor Nataliya Torkut and members and friends of the Ukrainian Shakespeare Centre. It is worth noting that Zaporizhzhia is in the region next to the War. It is a completely peaceful city despite a war in parts of two regions of the country 100 miles away. There are more shopping malls than Liverpool and more sushi restaurants than Manchester (pity, I don’t like sushi). I would have said more coffee shops also but the UK has had a further explosion of coffee shops in the last 18 months so we’re probably equal to this large city in SE Ukraine, bigger than Liverpool, that nearly no one in the UK has heard of. Great support for the people there that an intrepid Shakespeare public scholar from Birmingham has been to visit. (There are many alternate spellings, Zaporizhia from Russian, is more common still online, and you see Zaporozhye also). There are many great things about the city – Russian, Soviet, Ukrainian, industrial, post-industrial, concrete, green and nature; but the roads and pavements are terrible except in some public areas, and the driving catastrophic.
http://www.shakespearemagazine.com/2018/10/earlier-this-year-professor-michael-dobson-the-director-of-the-uks-shakespeare-institute-visited-a-university-in-ukraine-to-talk-about-spaces-for-shakespeare-an/

 

The Ukrainian Shakespeare Centre website:
http://shakespeare.zp.ua

Mostly in Ukrainian (a few links in English).

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Postcard: Observing the election in Ukraine.

A short piece on my election observation in Ukraine, on the University of Liverpool website.

Postcard: Kiron Reid observing the election in Ukraine

https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2014/06/09/postcard-kiron-reid-observing-the-election-in-ukraine/

Published 9 June 2014.

Thanks to Jamie Brown of the Press Office @livuninews for the editing. More analysis in next issue of Liberator magazine.

 

Published 14 June 2014;

Post edited 6 May 2022 to insert up to date link.